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Gigabyte's
GA-GF2560 SDR GeForce
Get
overclocked and ready to rock!
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| Installation
/ Setup with the GA-GF2560 |
| Standard
issue GeForce again! |
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| The
GA-GF2650 installation went cleanly and
uneventful. The board cooperated in both
our VIA Apollo Pro133A and BX board test
beds. One excellent plus for the GF2560
was the fact that this board handled a 150MHz.
FSB set up on the Soyo SY-6BA+IV - BX
Board. As you may know, this board only
divides the FSB by 2/3 for the AGP clock
generation. This left the GF2560 with a
100MHz. AGP bus to deal with, and it dealt with
it very well. We achieved full stability
with this combination on an overclocked P3-500E
set to 750MHz. (150X5).
Here is a shot of
the Gigabyte GeForce Drivers Properties panel.
Click
image for a closer look
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We were
a little disappointed here. The Gigabyte
Drivers are based the NVidia Reference Driver
version 3.65. The only difference is the
Gigabyte logo on the panel tabs. The drivers
give you no option to overclock, as we have seen on
other boards. We also would have liked to have
seen at least the latest NVidia driver version 3.68
used here. On the other hand, this board
certainly won't stop you from installing the latest
3.68 or even the unofficial 5.13 drivers, from
NVidia.
Here is
a shot of a few of the applications that Gigabyte
packs in with the card.
Click
image for full view
A TRIAL
version of Cyberlink's PowerDVD is bundled with the
board. This is a great program with a lot of
features that some PC DVD Players just don't
have. Why on earth Gigabyte only bundled in
the 30 day trial version of this, is beyond
us. Almost every GeForce board we have
reviewed in the past, came with some sort of DVD
Player with a full license, even if it was a "lite"
package. Again, this is only a minor issue
since you can still down load, from the net, many
DVD players of various varieties.
Here is
another small but useful utility that Gigabyte packs
in with the GF2560
The
"Power Player" utility is an enhancement
to the "Auto Play" feature that comes with
Win95/98. This program sits resident in your
task bar and senses when a CD or DVD is loaded,
detects what format of media it is and then plays
the ROM with the associated player application,
whether it is DVD, Music or other type of
media. This was a nice touch.
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| Overclocking
with the GF2560 |
| Time
to shine! |
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| Alright
then, we told you this board was different and
we meant it. As we mentioned, the
GA-GF2560 employs fairly good cooling as well as
those spiffy Elite MT 5.5ns SDRAM chips.
It should be no surprise that this board
overclocks well. What we weren't prepared
for was the fact that this board could handle a
155MHz. Core Clock and 190MHz. Memory Clock,
right out of the box with no additional or
custom cooling. This was a HotHardware Lab
Best!
Our case was well
ventilated but not to excess with only two 80mm
fans, one for intake and one for exhaust.
The GA-GF2560 held out through all of our
testing at these speeds with out a single lock
up, flashing texture or memory corruption
artifact. Now, we'll insert the standard,
"every card is different and you may not
see the same results", disclaimer
here. However, our experience with
Gigabyte NVidia based product in the past (ie
the GA660Plus TNT2
Ultra Card) has been that they produce some of
the most stable and "overclockable"
product on the market. This time was no
exception. Great stuff!
So, you are
beginning to become a believer here,
right? We were too. Let's see what
all this extra clock speed can do!
GA-GF2560
Benchmarks!
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